Novel except from... The Straight Life

Rough draft of passage near the beginning...

A MEETING OF MINDS -rewrite...

Awkward moment during Hogtown literary gathering, fewer than expected guests stand about with plastic wine glasses filled with sparkling Niagara swill. Crinkly-haired arch-Canadian publishing Satrap aka Stanley Beaverton the 3rd wears tiny round specs and coiffured beard he constantly strokes and ruminates upon. Finds himself next to muscular, Brut-soaked athwart 2^nd generation Ethno-Canucklehead who can’t shake an accent that is neither there nor here, and which makes him sound like a congenital moron to anyone within earshot. He christened himself Bruce since he was incapable of pronouncing his own given or surname. His chosen tag is a variation he's created in honor of his early love - the mighty Spruce Bingstein, formerly known as the artist known as Bing Sprucestein.

Bruce Hyphenated-Canucklehead fills mirrors with low hairline and beady eyes, gigged up in baggy wigger gear, circa 1997. An enormous rhinestone-encrusted crucifix hangs from his hairy neck, elaborately detailed suffering Christ figure done in total 3D, with huge semi-erect uncut wang and a face that looks like Ian Gillan, original howling JC Superstar Deep Purple stud-maestro. Bruce can’t describe it but instinctively understands his own ironic foreshadowing, prompting him to remark, Da chicks, dey dig it, mano. But only as long as he keeps making that face that makes his jaw hurt after a while but which long and extremely thin non-menstruating women pretend to find beguiling.

So Bruce and Stan Beaverton VIII find themselves in close proximity and trip one another’s radar in smallest available Hogtown Harbor Castle event room and feel neurotic and vaguely guilt-inspired impulse to enact actual, living breathing exchange of sentences and gestures.

Stan Beaverton XIV wonders and fantasizes, which his mind then carefully folds and Martinizes, whether Bruce would lay hands upon him. IE: beat the absolute living, puking shit out of him - as is his particular wont aka peccadillo. Stan Beaverton XVI wavers slightly in place, a tiny but lustful erection nudging his Y-front underpants. He nearly drools at thoughts of their speechless encounter beginning with a solid, big-swing backhand. THWAP! Followed by a torrent of vile curses bordering on gibberish and delivered with a heavy spray of rancid beer-stink saliva.

Stan Beaverton VI elaborates to self:

Our encounter would take place in a narrow, anonymous hallway - or perhaps an even more anonymous high rise apartment complex emergency stairwell littered with cigarette butts and pre-Cambrian condoms. No, no, too pretentiously nihilistic, too much accessible bathos.

“Hmm….” Stan Beaverton IV cogitates out loud. His eyes pop with inspiration.

A construction site… that’s it! On a sunny Sunday afternoon! A gentle breeze, a healthy and fulsome scenario serving as an example, a well-lit way forward for those who might follow in my mincing but trail-blazing footsteps.

So… A manly and well organized construction site but quiet since the sturdy unionized fellows who toil thereupon during their working hours are spending a well-earned Lord’s Day recreationizing with “buddies”, womenfolk and off-spring, fruit of their prodigious loins. It is a time when it could legitimately be claimed that no one but a pair of duty-bound Men would gain entry. Yes yes, oh yes a million times yes… This young Homo-Ethnicus standing next to me in a ludicrously aggressive posture, with legs threateningly apart and large feet splayed widely - he will appear, breathing heavily and  dressed only in work-worn Greb © brand steel-toed construction boots with traditional tan leather uppers and red oil-resistant rubber soles, classic gray and white work socks with white toe and heel sections, red stripe peaking above the fully laced boots, along with the requisite bright yellow construction helmet and safety glasses which to the untrained eye appear to be a simple pair of horned-rims but with clear sections attached to the templates, designed to protect the eyes from projectiles attacking from peripheral angles. Otherwise, the sexually hostile Homo-Multiculticus will be shod only in a heavily encrusted Kenneth Anger style jock strap. Oh, and work gloves, yes - the kind with the gray leather palms and traditional blue and white striped cloth topsides and gauntlets. And… and - of course! He will brandish a claw hammer with which to menace me! Homo-Immigraticus  must of course be unshaven and inspirationally hirsute, upper torso covered with an effusive chest pelt while shiny black pubic hair boils out of his jockstrap, and enormous swathes of long black fur-like coverings on his shoulders and flat but manly buttocks.

Stan Beaverton XII makes a small harrumphing noise then utters to Bruce,

“I respectfully assume you are hyphenated. Do you know any dances originating from the source of your forebears emigration?”

Bruce’s mouth falls open like a tailgate and waits for his brain to grind into gear. There’s an awful grunching noise and he finally replies:

“Me? What about you, pink man? Know any fuckin’ sword dances?”

“What’s that you say?”

“A book I’m writin’, stoopid. Whaddaya think I'm doing here? I'll tell ya about it. It goes like this. Ya listening?"
Stan Beaverton the XXV eyes him incredulously.
"Good," says Bruce. "Okay, here the plot outline: C’mon, Pasty! Kilts, bag pipes, rotten teeth, all that Scot-Ire-Eng LAND horseshit. Krauts, Frogs, strawhaired Danes, Dutch, Nordigeeks, all you snow white faggafellas and yur cold-ass bitches. But you don’t feed snake to the skanks, do ya? Yeah, yeah. You digga the smack around by the thick fingered Portogez, no? To beat the mother lovin’ scata right outa you, right? Being white is hell, ain’t it? See, the sun is where the bleach comes out, digga me, sheet face? So, me, I go olive dark - or what we in the trade call Mahgrebian. And you Pinksters, you go lobster red, rotten pink, headed straight for Melanomaville - ‘bout as sexy as a bleedin’ dog ‘rhoid. Fuck. You cacksuckers couldn’t even live in your smoggy, foggy, mossy northwestern Euro cradle of civilization type place without stealing the fuckin’ Gulfstream from the Caribs. Not for that, you’d all be jackin’ off into fuckin’ igloos. So you gonna pay large to blow my hamour or what da fuck? Beatings is extra. And if I gotta chase ya round an shit, that’s on top. Me no sabé workin’ for free, capeche?” Bruce and Stan Beaverton the IXX stare at one another. “So, uh…” Bruce probes. “Whaddaya tink? You gonna put me between yur covers, er wha? Wanna talk to my agentrice?”

“My dear man, I-”

“Before ya say anythin’, Saddlestitch, lemme go drain my dragon.”

 Bruce leaves Stan Beaverton the XVX in search of the “turlet”, as he’s learned to call the defection room. He decides to commit an act which some writer he’d met at a party in Montreal ages ago convinced him was entirely feasible. The writer, whose real name was equally ethnic but completely unpronounceable related an experience whereby he was in the can at a big house party, taking a piss. When he turned and opened the door and was about to walk out, the girlfriend of a fellow writer he couldn’t stand was drifting past. She was lithe and aloof and wore only black. The writer with the unpronounceable name reportedly reached out and taking the woman almost imperceptibly by the wrist, smiled shyly and barely murmured: “C’mere…” so only she could hear him. He drew her into the can and shut the door, much to the chagrin of those lined up outside, waiting to go, who let out a chorus of “Hey!” but instinctively understood that to make a further kerfuffle would label them as irredeemably “provincial”, an epithet they’d do anything avoid, up to and including contract bubonic plague.

According to the writer with the unpronounceable name, he and the lithe girlfriend of the aforementioned hated writer had passionate, violent sex on the counter top, as the resounding CRACK, which could be heard through the closed door, attested. What the writer with the unpronounceable name didn’t tell Bruce at the time - because they were interrupted and Bruce lost focus - was that the writer with the unpronounceable name and the girlfriend of the hated writer continued their soul-absorbing relationship on and off for a couple years then eventually moved in together, their intimacy growing into something far more intense and meaningful than that first moment they’d touched.

If Bruce had known all this he would have felt duped since his admiration resided in the assumption that the writer with the unpronounceable name had achieved a singular act of sheer unmitigated BALLS. The story had so inspired Bruce it made him decide to become a writer himself and that’s why he was at this quiet literary gathering in the smallest event room in the Hogtown Harbor Castle. All he needed to figure out was what you actually DO at these things, besides stand around, refrain from picking your ass and drink really shitty rotgut and eat gross crap that looked, to him at least, like nothing but puke on crackers.

Needless to say, the restroom was empty and no one was lined up outside when Bruce approached. He walked in and it stank as if someone had really blown their cramped guts out after eating some awful concoction fried in rancid goat fat. Despite this, and with inspiration fixed firmly in his mind, Bruce closed the door, drained his “komodo” as he liked to refer to his organ since he was of the ilk who enjoyed naming his own body parts.

When Bruce turned and opened the door, a newly married woman suffering from a yeast infection and who’d had a fight with her mother that very afternoon was walking past. Bruce reached out and clamped onto her wrist and suddenly yelled, “Come! HERE!” When a stunned and angry look leaps across the woman’s face and she resisted, Bruce tried to drag her bodily into the rank shit-cloud still thickly hovering within. As one might imagine, the woman assumed Bruce was personally responsible for the choking, eye-burning stench. However, rather than cry out for help, she used a technique known as the “Slingshot”, a little something she’d learned in an attack-resistance class, a variation on the fundamental jujitsu theme that teaches adherents to use the opponent’s force to defeat him. The woman let Bruce pull her toward him with considerable energy and timed it perfectly to drive a bony knee into his balls, thus increasing the impact exponentially. Bruce let out a sudden “GUH!” and released the woman’s wrist. He doubled over in agony, sank to the tiled floor and convulsively vomited.

In what seemed to him to be only moments, a pair of immense and spikey haired security apes descended. Unable to stand, Bruce was hauled away on his knees, which caused a tremendous build-up of static energy as his highly synthetic pants rubbed against the highly synthetic hallway carpet, till finally Bruce and the two apes simultaneously screamed: “FUCK!” after all three were given painful jolts of electricity with visible sparks actually flying between them.

With the guard apes momentarily disabled and wondering if some new weapon they’d failed to notice on the Intertgoog had been used on them, Bruce made good his getaway. He ran down the hall and suddenly remembering a Bruce Willis movie - or perhaps it was that other actor, Bald Savage - either way, he opened a laundry chute and dove in head first.

Unlike the movie he'd recalled, the trip down the chute was long and hurtful, with Bruce suffering several concussive blows to the head. After finally landing in giant laundry hamper approximately two minutes later, he was unconscious.

The guard apes had meanwhile summoned the police and the building was surrounded. But no staff member could be found who knew the actual path and terminus of the various laundry chutes. They’d been obsolete for years, since guests began to bring their own sheets, pillows and camper beds due to the raging bedbug epidemic. The problem had become so acute the mighty hotelier was nearly bankrupted in a lawsuit when a powerful financier got cocooned in a miasma of bedbug feces and was carried off by the rapidly evolving creatures.

The Vampy Vampire Schitck pays off again...

There's a book coming out soon, published by Harper-Collins. It's called Quiver and is one of those vampy vampire bodice ripper quasi-history, quasi-psycho thrillers written for sexually frustrated suburbanites by a sexually frustrated suburbanite.
The reason I'm even mentioning this pap is because its launch point is the story of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the so-called Female Dracula, who lived from the mid-16th century to the early 17th century. The myth about her is that she killed hundreds of young girls and bathed in their blood, believing it would keep her young and beautiful.
Anybody who does even a modicum of research soon realizes it's a story that was concocted by the power brokers of the time, to depose a woman who was one of the last remaining Protestant nobles in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After her husband died in battle fighting the Ottomans, the Countess became the sole owner and active administrator of a vast network of lands, palaces and villages within her domain.
She was of such high rank, she may have even ended up as the Queen of Poland. That alone was unthinkable at the Vatican  - to have a Protestant queen in that staunchly Catholic dominion. Countess Bathory used her mansions and money to not only support her deceased husband's regiment but she built hospitals and sanitariums for wounded soldiers and for the peasantry who lived in the village on her lands. She spoke several languages and corresponded with some of the great minds of the era, often in Latin or Greek. To suddenly decide, in her late 30's, to become a blood thirsty maniac is clearly fantasy. Her trial was perfunctory with many witnesses giving their confessions under torture. The Countess was one of the last powerful anti-Catholic forces remaining in the region. Being an educated, enlightened and politically savvy woman, she was clearly seen as a threat.
So it is brutally ironic that Countess Elizabeth Bathory was accused of committing these atrocities by none other than the organization which had undertaken the Inquisition.
This propaganda campaign devised to destroy her worked very well and she was eventually convicted but being a noble, could not be executed (don't want to give the peasantry idea, now). So she was bricked up in a room in her palace and died there four years later.
Even today, the Hungarian government is loathe to open the full texts of the trial or to clear her name. With goth and vampire nonsense having become a major Western entertainment theme, parts of central Europe, like Hungary and Romania, are earning substantial foreign currency from the mobs of tourists descending on these places to see where "monsters" like Bathory, Vlad and Dracu lived.
So it's no surprise we have reputed authors like Holly Luhning once again cashing in on this mythology. It would make a far more interesting read to expose the truth of the case. But in the same way that Michael Ondatje perpetuated the idiotic myth about Billy the Kid, it would be bad for business to tell the real story.

Thracian fable...

Over the years I've collected old ancedotes, stories, etc from various relatives before they completely died off. It's something I should have done more consistently but who ever thinks of these things. Well, not me.
Anyway, here's one I recently dug up from a box of papers I'd been going through. I scribbled it down in point-form about a million years ago and have tried to clean it up. It needs more work but the basic story is there and it's fairly telling of a certain mindset that now seems incredibly foreign.
INSURRECTION

The insurrection began inside Evangelia long before anything was evident. Not a great deal was expected of her, aside from the usual skills and chores carried out by women of her era. By the time she began to menstruate at 13 years of age, Evangelia’s mother, Andromache, was well into negotiations with various families in the village. The likeliest pairing - and the one Andromache coveted– was with the local post master, Mappa.  His son Anastasios – or Saki from the dimunitive, Anastasaki, was a decent enough boy, but shy and boney. No hero. However, Andromache felt he wouldn’t abuse and beat her daughter either. Sometimes Andromache thought it might be better to tie Evangelia to one of the young beasts the village was so good at producing. Hulking young males that rapidly grew into manhood. Large heads and big, field-rough hands, enormous feet and shoulders. Men who were kind enough to females of their kin but clearly considered women to be a lesser sort of creature. With their purpose to be sure, but easily replaced. No sense of sentiment or depth of feeling. Money counted, along with land and animals and weapons. Patriots. Men with fearsome rages and ground-shaking shouts, instantly ready to draw blood. But Andromache knew it was jealously talking. Yes, jealous of her own daughter. Shameful, but there it was. Jealous of Evangelia’s young beauty, her pride and her heat. Andromache never had the gall to talk back the way Evangelia did so naturally, sharp tongued replies rolling out of her with barely a thought. Truth was, Andromache knew that if Evangelia married one of the village beasts, he’d rape and eventually kill her for that tongue. At least Saki was one of the rare breed that seemed to shrink from that crowd. He’d inherit the postmaster’s nomination from his father and treat Evangelia fairly. It made Andromache barely smile to know her daughter wouldn’t be treating Saki fairly. She’d test his limits and finding them confused and ill defined, Evangelia would push and push and eventually run his life. Well, he needed something like that anyway, a strong woman to keep him from becoming melancholy.

Andromache also knew her daughter would almost certainly have affairs with one or more of the village beasts. Hopefully she’d be discreet enough or intimidating enough to prevent any fiascos. Saki would be cuckolded and he’d grow to accept it, bitter in his way, but easily cajoled by his beautiful, fire-eyed wife.

Your cultural dollars at work... plus ca change...

A while ago I went to book launch/reading featuring two novels published by Anvil Press, a grant-supported, small Canadian publisher. The books in question are Kaspoit by Dennis E. Bolen and The Skeleton Dance by Philip Quinn. It was held at the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto. I brought along four people. Our group made up about half of everyone there, including the host and the bartender.

The atmosphere was quiet and reverential, with polite pre-event banter over wine and sparkling water. It felt like the religious service of an obscure United Church sect that had fallen on hard times. The disappointing turn-out was apparently due to a marketing snafu. One of the evening’s authors told me the Anvil brain trust had admitted to him that “they don’t know how to do that stuff.”

The host explained that the title Kaspoit, written by the evening’s first reader, Dennis E. Bolen, refers to the sound a beer can makes when opened. Not the Ptshhh or Pssss you or I may have mistakenly believed. While Bolen read, an assistant operated a laptop computer that emitted an audio track of distorted voices, squeaks, squiggles and burps. It reminded me of those high school classes eons ago when a socially awkward, acne-plagued young man from the A/V department would roll in an overhead projector and help the teacher show out-of-focus transparencies on a dim screen.

Putting aside whether the writing was any good or not, the most memorable part of the readings was that both authors began with scenes featuring the murder, rape and/or torture and/or sexual mutilation of live and/or dead women. This seems to be a common trend lately among white middle-aged male authors and aspiring white middle-aged male authors.

An editor friend told me that over the past few years she's had the misfortune of reading quite a few unpublished manuscripts written by the aforementioned aspiring white middle aged male authors. The regularity with which they immediately launch into the rape/torture/mutilation/murder, etc of a woman or women, both living and dead, prompted my editor pal to declare it a new genre. In addition to westerns, techno-thrillers, whodunits and sexy vampire tales, she said there ought to be a new genre called She Deserved It.

 If you talk to Bolen or Quinn, you’ll find they are very nice, polite, good and gentle Canadians. I’m sure they don’t beat their pets or abuse their partners or their offspring. You can also assume with virtual certainty they’ve never stolen so much as a newspaper or committed a single indictable offense. So what’s the deal? You could get all Freudian but there’s got to be something else going on here. Maybe they’re just exercising their right to poetic license and artistic freedom.

To me it smacks of  that modern archetype; the angry young techno-feeb, driven mad because the interweb has not delivered the real and visceral power over women’s bodies he had dreamed of. After hours and hours of the internet being unable to satisfy his hellish sexual frustration, he gets to thinking: “I’ll show them. I’ll write something that’s so gross and so disgusting and so violent that it’ll be grosser and disgustinger and violenter than all the other gross and digusting and violent stuff out there put together!”

In other words, that stupid male adolescent urge to make all the girls go “Eeewwww! Gross!” taken to the nth degree when some pea-brained publisher invests enough time and government money to endow it with the aegis of “art.”

But let’s get back to the evening in question. Just so you know your tax dollars are doing some good, the actual books themselves are beautifully designed, printed and bound. I mean really gorgeous objects, nice enough to frame. However, you would be hard pressed to actually find any Anvil publications - I mean in a bookstore. I hunted through a handful of booksellers and could find no Anvil authors.

A few copies of each of the novels being launched that evening were scattered on a table in the entry way but no effort was made to sell any. I guess that would be considered gauche. I was also given to understand that just a few hundred copies of each book are produced. So what we have here is the more or less symbolic publication of two novels and a book launch that could have been held in a minivan. As for Canada’s small press scene cum mutual admiration society, you know the old expression. Plus ça change…

Getting involved in the Canadian publishing scene has made me realize something. For the most part, it's a closed shop. I don't mean they keep people out. More like nobody even knows they exist, except each other. I guess the same thing happens when you get involved in any other obscure calling, like the buggy whip makers association or the one-line poem society. You go to a number or these events and you realize, hey, it's always the same people - no 'real' people ever attend. Mostly cuz they don't know about it but also because they undoubtedly find it unbearably dull and soft and formless, like a whole life in diapers.

A real classic member of this crowd is poet Stuart Ross. When I told him about how stupid that Anvil night was, he got all highhanded and upset and replied thusly:

"I think that a lot of small presses could do better, but I think this is important: none of these people are in it for the money: they have chosen to lead a spartan life because they believe in literature."

(my emphasis)

Is this guy a scream or what? Spartan life... sheesh, what a card.

Horrible White people writing horrible white things

I've spent most of the day reading online literary mags cuz my editor suggested I submit stuff to some of them. First of all, there a ton of these things, all very clever and artfully done. But, man, the stories are so goddamn WHITE. The neurotic minutae of white people doing white things and having white thoughts, so fucking square and humorless it hurts. News flash to all those with MFAs in Creative Writing: Intentionally weird and/or quirky non-sequiturs are NOT irony.

Irony is trying to TEACH someone to be creative. The result is the same bad, self-conscious story written over and over by many different people who've spent their time with other neurotic writer wannabes instead of actually having a life and experiences - experiences that are the raw material of any fiction. Go ahead, write about your goddamn MFA in Creative Writing classes. Why the hell do you think that when the words "Canadian fiction" are uttered, people run in the opposite direction? Why do you think that when you hold a reading, only your best friends that want something from you attend? Why not write about that? Sheesh...

There really are way too many middle class white women writing the same heartfelt crap about some fucked up relationship that reads so awkward and tone-deaf. It's amazing how few of these MFA types don't get the music of writing. You read the thing out loud to yourself - not just mutter it quietly. No, really stand up and read the thing OUT LOUD. It's like a rock'n'roll song. On paper, it seems pretty great then you play it OUT LOUD and it goes ta da ta da ta da CLUNK. And THEN you realize - naw, I'm just being a clever asshole, this really doesn't work cuz it's got no soul, no rhythm. That's the horrible whiteness of so much of this Canadian writing. Brutal, really brutal stuff. Forget about the wire jacket or thumbscrews. You wanna torture somebody? Tie them down and have some monotone nasal drone like Peggy Atwood read new Canadian fiction written by newly minted Creative Writing MFAs. Guaranteed, after twenty minutes of this abuse, anybody will tell you ANYTHING. The Nazis would have conquered the world with this shit.

Another early excerpt draft from...

novel-in-progress Thracian Tales

This stuff is still fairly rough, and there isn't an overall novel structure yet. Well, that takes time, the narrative revealing itself as I work. Who knows what it's about, many things. That will come. At this stage, I write scenes and see how they fit later on... This scene is called; Our Beautiful Devourers. It's the musings of an old Uncle of mine up in northeastern Greece, the province of Thrace, talking about a woman he knew that he'd fought alongside in the resistance against the Nazis during WWII and during the Greek Civil war when they'd served on the communist side. He told me this story back in the early '90's, a couple years before he passed on.

“She was one of our beautiful devourers.”

Uncle Kotchou barely nods, a slight smile on his lips. “Andromache’s nom de guerre was ‘Rosa.’ Even at twenty years old she was unstoppable. She took a bullet to the shoulder and didn’t howl when it got picked out piece by piece with nothing but a bit of brandy. Andromache just hissed and spat as our medic worked.”

He shakes his head, clearly still amazed after all these decades, gray eyes opening wider. “Her strength was phenomenal, mostly driven by rage - like one of those high-strung mules that drags a full load out of sheer will. Many times I saw her toss a wounded man onto a wagon like a sack of corn. You could see it in her eyes - green as new grass.” Kotchou laughs and slaps the table top. His eyes well up a little and he points a finger at me.

“It was a right farce when her parents tried to marry Andromache off to some buffoon almost thirty years older. A balding little shit from Amorio - but with good holdings, a couple shops and houses he rented out, a small dairy, several fields and animals. He even drove an automobile - American, a shiny blue Cord with a white roof.” Kotchou searches round the floor, thinking back. “Yes… Andromache was fifteen and she grimly went along with it, her folks hurrying through the obligatory ritual and a meager feast afterwards. There was no money around then and her groom - his name was Kolovalvida. Him and his mother weren’t about to spend needlessly to show off so it wasn’t the kind of big village wedding you’d see sometimes in the old days. In a couple hours it was all done, her parents were paid off and he drove Andromache to his house, back in Amorio, ‘a bitch to breed’, as they say.”

Kotchou begins to chuckle then works up to a gasping laughter, tears running down his face. I can’t believe he’s letting go like this. His demeanor is almost always stoic, bordering on severe. But right now he can barely get the words out. “On the wedding night - ha ha ha! Kolovalvida - ha ha ha! - he’d gone into Andromache’s room after primping himself with oils and scents, ready to romance and make love to his young virgin bride, instruct her in the ways of Eros. Suddenly, out of the darkness, she pounced on him, thrashing and tearing at his night clothes, grabbed hold of him with nails and teeth, screeching like a panther to get between his legs! Andromache was on fire with lust and wanted her connubial due. Kolovalvida wrestled and fought with her, believing some kind of vampire or wild beast had slaughtered his young wife and was now attacking him! He finally broke free and went dashing into the lane in a panic, terrified, crying for help and covered in bloody bites and gashes, pieces of hair torn out. His old mother came running from across the way, armed with a broom, along with some neighbors awoken by the commotion.”

Kotchou wipes his eyes and blows his nose. “Christ and the virgin, Kolovalvida looked like he’d been dragged through a mile of thorn bushes! The next morning, his face all bandaged up, he took Andromache back to her parents and demanded a refund. Of course they were mortified and ashamed beyond words.”

He turns sour. “Well, what did they expect? Anyone could see Andromache was bloodthirsty through and through, unquenchable. They should have married her off to one of those strapping young fools who was strong enough to play in the same arena.” He lights a smoke and waves off the whole idea. “Ach… Afterwards, her parents, they treated Andromache badly, leaving her some nights at the farm outside the village, with the pigs, acting like fucking martyrs, as if they were the ones suffering the worst of fates - a wild-eyed daughter. That made them dote on her spineless brother, the goddamn fairy. So it’s no wonder Andromache joined us in the resistance when the Germans got here - and thank Christ she did.”

Rough notes from...

new novel-in-progress Thracian Tales

Note 1

Whenever I quit using for a while, all the suppressed stuff floods in - but never in the front door. It’s surreptitious, leaking through cracks here and there, oozing up from between the floor boards while I’m day dreaming, or asleep, half asleep. Unexpected and twisted ideas, they’ve been backed up in a traffic jam of undirected psychosis for too long now.

Like that life sized doll of Countess Erzsébet Bathory, from a long line of Huns, the disappeared people of the Steppe. After I see her standing in the doorway of her citadel, everything turns to black and white - even blood.

It all becomes a malevolent force through the bending of time - attracted by my new lack of deep intoxication, the soul/mind portal that’s opened now that I’m completely weak, too un-stoned to resist her.

Her ideas and images are absorbed, her teeth rend victims, the flesh of a young girl’s breast bitten and torn away.

And yet I lust for her.. for her nobility, her madness. She was one of the last powerful Protestant hold-outs, the anti-Papist artistrocracy. They called her the female Dracu, the female Impaler, the woman vampire. But there is too much contradiction. I find myself in the old Austro-Hungarian courts, piles of books the size of coffins, takes two arms to open the cover. Her trial in detail. She turned her lands and her palaces into hospital for soldiers wounded fighting the Turk, for the ill peasantry on her lands. How did she shift from that to a blood drinker? Or was it once again the power she would not cede, her name and position attacked through propaganda. The Protestant Countess.

Note 2

I’m in a wheelchair - not needed - more an affectation, a statement of power. I choose to ride a wheelchair but I am not infirm. A plush old theater, crushed red velvet, gold painted filigree, but rundown and somewhat abandoned, dog-earred and Soviet and untenable.

There are people coming and going, some offer to help me but it’s a grating, wide-eyed pity, which causes profound irritation I cannot verbalize. I tell them the wheelchair is a gag, a prop. They nod, unfazed and continue on.

Long sweeping ramps from mezzanine level to ground, Persian carpeted ramps rather than stairs, with a wide elaborately carved banister, painted gold and silver and red.

I roll down the ramp in my wheelchair, picking up speed and almost out of control, going too wide, may crash into outside banister, the brakes are questionable, toy brakes that begin to squeal.

A life-sized version of myself in 18^th century central European, Austro-Hungarian dandy type outfit. But a grim and unquenchable, amoral me - dark-eyed and dark haired, not a shred of sentiment.

I hear the larger than life me say: “Sympathy is for fools and old women.”

The wheelchair rattles along now on the ground floor of theater. Going toward the sunlight of the leaded front doors, I roll past an elaborate old billiard table. The 18^th century version of me lays on it. I’m large, about 6 foot 5, eyes closed but clearly awake and alert.

One of the wheelchair’s handles hooks onto larger than life-sized me, gets tangled up with petticoats, capes, tweed, houndstooth, wide Hassidim fedora head gear. I realize the L than L me is a Golem, my old Golem from a time forgotten in youth, a young, good looking me doing a fashionable impersonation of Dr. F. Then remember I’d auditioned for part and got fleeced when Kenneth Branaugh got it and I still hate him for that duplicity, his fucking connections. But my Golem was left behind, untouched and forgotten. The wheelchair’s handle tears away part of the Golem’s sleeve, disturbing him, waking him.

He rises with a great deal of hatred, aggression, mad-eyed but cold blooded, threats to eat all in sight. I jump out of the wheelchair, moving backwards, trip backwards on carpeted ramp. I’m on my back and kick Golem in the chest, send him sprawling but he comes at me again, undeterred, his expression remains determined and monstrous. I kick him again, he comes at me, relentless, tries to grab my leg as I’m prone, to tear it off. I squirm and pull my barefoot away from his strong hand. I wake up kicking.

Deep, inherent evil, something that was there already, waiting to be awoken, provoked by my reading about Erzsébet Bathory. Matrilineal? Patrilineal? Thrace - that mystery of heading into the dark heart of northern Thrace, away from the warm, blue Aegean, the laughing sun, into the dim, wet hills, poverty stricken, where suspicion rules and no one raises their voice, only the wind and the call of a lone crow.

What force is this? Internal? External?

Note 3

I remember me then, long black hair, white coveralls, nothing else, maybe barefoot. Wolf’s tooth around neck.

NYC street

level racism.

Well dressed black guy, wearing a camel coat, in Washington Sq., middle of the night. Asks: “Ya think I could sleep here?”

“Uh, no. Not unless you wanna get robbed.”

“Y’know,” he says. “My people got lynched and fucked over, but your people - your people, they got fuckin’ well wiped out!”

Note 3A

A tall, gorgeous native guy with long silky black hair and a black leather blazer, a beaded bracelet but no other goofy accessories. I get an instant crush on him at a party at Jen Weymouth’s new apartment at Bernard and the Main. We’re introduced. He’s an artist. I flirt with him - someone mentions I’m Greek.

“Creek?”

“No, Greek.”

“Oh, I thought you were Indian.”

“Yeah, I get that sometimes. It’s my Mongol blood.”

He looked at me, blank. Okay, so he’s not book-smart, I tell myself, but geez, he’s so pretty and I love his hands. I spied downward. Everything looks nice’n’tight. Hmm.

We talked about Oka, the Mohawks, the Warrior’s society and their Mercier bridge occupation, the Surete battling with rednecks on the north end of the bridge.

“Listen, man,” he explains. “I’m not interested in that. I just want to paint and hang out, get next to some women. This other stuff’s too serious for me.”

I nod and wonder what I’d need to say to get him into bed but he seems decidedly hetero. I don’t broach the subject. Too bad. Some airhead blonde sidled up to us, chin down, grinning up at him. She’s already imaging them naked together. I think about a threesome but she’s only got pussy eyes for him.

Goddamn, he’s purty, ain’t he, sister?

Mount Royal novel, cover shot - Whaddaya think?

On the left is the cover of the new Harper Perennial Library edition of Henry Miller's 1938 classic, Tropic of Capricorn. On the right, a possible cover shot for this novel I've written, Mount Royal, which is coming out with Tightrope Books in the spring of next year. It was taken by Peter Gorman and it's a nice riff on the shot used for the new Henry Miller edition.
Sure, Gorman's photo is a bit racy. Well, for prudish and Victorian North America it's a bit racy. In Europe, this would of course be seen for what it is, a nicely composed photo of a woman.
I like all the V shapes in Gorman's pic, her bra straps, her arms, her breasts, how her stockings are being pulled down, the shaft of light. It's got a beautifully elegant yet sinister noir feel to it, a feeling helped by her expression in profile and I love her schnozz (being a confirmed schnozz nut an all). And the dark man's face in the tv tube behind her also adds a nice element. There's a lot going on. Anyway, opinions are encouraged. Please, tell me, whaddaya think?